Copyright and Fair Use

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A healthy copyright system must balance the need to provide strong economic incentives through exclusive rights with the need to protect important public interests like free speech and expression. Fair use is foundational to that balance. It's role is to prevent copyright from stifling the creativity it is supposed to foster, and from imposing other burdens that would inhibit rather than promote the creation and spread of knowledge and learning.

The Fair Use Project (FUP) was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom and protect important public rights. It is the only organization in the country dedicated specifically to providing free and comprehensive legal representation to authors, filmmakers, artists, musicians and other content creators who face unmerited copyright claims, or other improper restrictions on their expressive interests. The FUP has litigated important cases across the country, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, and worked with scores of filmmakers and other content creators to secure the unimpeded release of their work.

Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer returns to Stanford after working with the internet boutique firm of Zwillgen PLLC. Before that, she was the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security, electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Read more » about Jennifer Granick

Martin Husovec is a IMPRS-CI Doctoral Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society (CIS) and Impact Litigator at European Information Society Institute (EISi), an independent non-profit organization based in Slovakia focusing on the overlap of technology, law & society. Read more » about Martin Husovec

David S. Levine is an Associate Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School (CIS). He is also the founder and host of Hearsay Culture on KZSU-FM (Stanford University), an information policy, intellectual property law and technology talk show for which he has recorded over 190 interviews since May 2006. Hearsay Culture was named as a top five podcast in the ABA's Blawg 100 of 2008 and can be found at http://hearsayculture.com.

Ryan isn’t a jack of many trades, but he works every day to master three: lawyering, legal thought, and writing great books. Since launching his law practice in 2006, he has become a trusted advisor in intellectual property and related litigation/transactional matters to California and New York based technology and media innovators, including best new iTunes app Kanvas and Ramble Krohn (“RJD2”), composer of the theme music to AMC’s Mad Men series. Read more » about Ryan E. Long

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Apple (computer) and Apple (records) announcedyesterday they had once again (finally?) resolved their trademark dispute, which dated back to the formation of the computer company in the 1970’s. Under the undisclosed terms of the new agreement, the computer company will be the “owner” of the Apple marks and license back to the music company the ones it uses (e.g., the green apple). And now, at last, iTunes will begin to sell Beatles songs.href="http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1959687,00.asp">I predicted last May that this would be the outcome of the lawsuit brought by the music company two years ago, but it didn’t take a genius to see what was coming. Read more » about Apple v Apple: Helter Skelter

This is the most important thing that has happened on the intellectual property front lately. Former Soviet president Gorbachev asks Microsoft's Bill Gates not to pursue IP litigation against a high school teacher in Perm who used pirated software in classroom because: - he is poor - he has dedicated his life to teaching - he was just using pirated software, but has not installed and/or downloaded it, - because the possible punishment (imprisonment is Siberia) is disproportionate. Read more » about Turning point in copyright infringement cases

I attended the motion to dismiss hearing in the Shloss v. Estate of Joyce case on Wednesday morning. Here a photo of Professor Shloss and two people from the legal team, David Olson (CIS Fellow) and Tony Falzone (Exec. Dir. of the Fair Use Project). (A couple more photos are available in my flickr set.) Read more » about Shloss hearing

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Sarah Morris is a well-known multimedia artist and filmmaker. In 2007, she debuted her "Origami" series, 24 paintings in which she reworked, redesigned, and reshaped origami crease patterns on canvas. Several origami artists sued Morris for copyright infringement, arguing Morris had unduly appropriated their allegedly copyrightable origami crease patterns in developing the "Origami" series. The Fair Use Project teamed up with attorneys Bob Clarida and Donn Zaretsky to defend Morris. We briefed the fair use issues on summary judgment. Read more » about Lang v. Morris

Meltwater News ("Meltwater") is a search engine and research tool that allows users to search for and obtain information about news items that have been made publicly available on the Internet. Read more » about Associated Press v. Meltwater

We filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts urging the appeals court to reverse a district court decision that ignored established fair use principles that many artists rely upon in creating their work. Read more » about Cariou v. Prince

The FUP filed this suit on behalf of a University of Denver conductor and others, challenging Congress’s restoration of copyright to works that had entered the public domain. Read more » about Golan v. Holder

"“The idea that you're going to get an injunction and a finding of infringement based on speculation of security harms without any actual facts to support that concern, the court showed it has no reason to accept it,” said Julie Ahrens, director of copyright and fair use at Stanford Law School's Center for the Internet and Society."Read more » about Library Ruling A Good Sign For Google In Next Book Case

"“I was wondering if it was evil or stupid,” New York University Law Prof. Christopher Sprigman said. “I realized I didn’t have to decide — it’s both.”

No corporation could force pi to stand in for their brand like the swoosh does for Nike, because it’s already part of the everyday language, he said — people see the symbol and think of the math constant, not Ingrisano’s clothes.

Right of publicity law is a mess. Courts apply a variety of tests and apply these tests inconsistently to different forms of media. At the same time, the right of publicity impacts a wide range of speech--from movies, to computer games, to baseball cards. Uncertainty about the relevant standards makes it difficult to advise clients about the scope of the right. Read more » about The Right of Publicity in the Digital Age

Three dimensional printing turns bits into atoms. The technology is simply amazing. These machines draw on programming, art and engineering to enable people to design and build intricate, beautiful, functional jewelry, machine parts, toys and even shoes. In the commercial sector, 3D printing can revolutionize supply chains as well. As the public interest group Public Knowledge wrote once, "It will be awesome if they don't screw it up."Read more » about 3D Printing: Is the Law Ready for the Future?